The week that was in property

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) released their quarterly data on property exposures from Australian authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) earlier this week and you can read a lot more about the results at the CoreLogic RP Data Research Blog.

The highlights from the data release were:

65.7% of outstanding mortgages were to owner occupiers with the remaining 34.3% to investors.

Record high 28.6% of all outstanding mortgages were interest-only with 43% of loans approved over the final quarter of 2014 interest-only.

Average outstanding mortgage size is $241,400 with loans with an offset facility ($285,900) and interest-only mortgages ($311,300) having a much larger outstanding balance than other mortgage types.

In the December 2014 quarter, there was 7.9% more borrowed by owner occupiers compared to the same period in 2013 and 15.9% more borrowed by investors.

11.4% of mortgages written in the December 2014 quarter had an LVR of more than 90%, the lowest proportion of total lending to this cohort since the March 2011 quarter.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released data on construction work done for the December 2014 quarter this week

The data showed that over the December quarter, total work fell by -0.2% over the quarter with engineering construction down -0.6% and non-residential building down -2.9% while residential building rose 2.5%.

Year-on-year, engineering construction is -12.3% lower, non-residential building is down -2.6% while residential building is 12.7% higher.

It is important to note that over the quarter, engineering accounted for 55.4% of all construction work done compared to residential building which was 27.6% and non-residential building which was 17.1%.

Given this, the rise in residential construction is currently not enough to offset the fall in engineering construction nor is it likely to be able to completely fill that void left by the downturn in mining related investment.

CoreLogic RP Data recorded 2,063 auction results over the previous week accounting for 87% of all auctions held across the capital cities.

Auction volumes remain lower than they were at the same time last year, when 2,905 auctions were held over the week.

The final auction clearance rate over the past week was recorded at 77.3%, compared to 74.0% the previous week and 76.2% at the same time last year.

Last week’s clearance rate is the strongest recorded across the capital city market since mid-2009.

The strong clearance rate was reflected in Australia’s two largest auction markets with Melbourne recording a clearance rate of 75.8% across 975 auction results, up from 70.9% the previous week and 73.5% at the same time last year.

In Sydney, 86.2% of auctions recorded a successful result, up from 83.3% the previous week and higher than the 84.2% recorded at the same time last year.

There were 921 Sydney properties auctioned last week with 802 results captured.

Number of homes for sale

Note that sales listings are based on a rolling 28 day count of unique properties that have been advertised for sale.

The number of homes being advertised for sale has continued to move higher, however national listing numbers are -2.5% lower than a year ago and capital city listings are -4.1% lower than the same time last year.

[sam id=49 codes=’true’]

Over the past four weeks there have been 45,681 newly advertised properties added to the market which is -2.8% fewer than at the same time one year ago.

A similar trend can be seen across the capital cities where 28,447 new listings hit the market over the past four weeks which is -1.7% lower than at the same time last year.

Brisbane (+0.1%), Perth (+3.1%) and Darwin (+11.7%) are the only capital cities where new listings are higher now than they were a year ago.

Meanwhile, only Perth (+10.4%) and Darwin (+31.6%) have more total stock for sale now than they did a year ago.

Enter your Email:

Your information will not be shared with any 3rd party. That's a promise.

Property investor resources

Guide to getting rich

Invested in property?

PropertyUpdate.com.au is Australia's leading property investment wealth creation website with tips, advice and strategies from leading real estate investment experts. Featuring topics like property investment, property development (helping you understand the process), negative gearing and finance (so you can borrow more from the banks), property tax (allowing you to structure for legal tax deductions and asset protections), negotiation, property management (assisting landlords and tenants understand their right responsibilities), commercial property (for experienced property investment individuals), personal development and the psychology of property investment success.